Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

CHAPTER III

THE DREAM LADY OF AVALON

Like a disk of glowing gold the sun had set upon hill and dale. The gardens of Avalon lay wrapt in the mists of evening. Like flowers seemed the fair women who thronged the winding paths. From fragrant bosquets, borne on the wings of the night wind came the faint sounds of zitherns and lutes.

He, too, was there, mingling joyous, carefree, with the rest, gathering the white roses for the one he loved. Dimly he recalled his delight, as he saw her approach in the waning light through the dim ilex avenue, an apparition wondrous fair in the crimson haze of slowly departing day, entering his garden of dreams. With strangely aching heart he saw them throng about her in homage and admiration.

At last he knelt before her, kissing the white hand that lay passive within his own.

How wonderful she was! Never had he seen anything like her, not even in this land of flowers and of beautiful women. Her hair was warm as if the sun had entered into it. Her skin had the tints of ivory. The violet eyes with the long drooping lashes seemed to hold the memories of a thousand love thoughts. And the small, crimson mouth, so witch-like, so alluring, seemed to hold out promise of fulfilment of dizzy hopes and desires.

"It is our golden hour," she smiled down at him, and the white fingers twined the rose in her hair, wove a girdle of blossoms round her exquisite, girlish form.

To Tristan she seemed an enchantment, an embodied rose. Never had he seen her so fair, so beautiful. On her lips quivered a smile, yet there was a strange light in her eyes, that gave him pause, a light he had never seen therein before.

She beckoned him away from the throng. "Come where the moonlight dreams."

Her smile and her wonderful eyes were his beacon light. He rose to his feet and took her hand. And away they strayed from the rest of the crowd, far away over green lawns, emerald in the moonlight, with, here and there, the dark shadow of a cypress falling across the silvery brightness of their path. Little by little the gardens were deserted. Fainter and fainter came the sounds of lutes and harps. The shadows of the grove now encompassed them, as silently they strode side by side.

"This is my Buen Retiro," she spoke at last. "Here we may rest – for awhile – far from the world."

They entered the rose-bower, a wilderness, blossoming with roses and hyacinths and fragrant shrubs – a very paradise for lovers. —

The bells of a remote convent began to chime. They smote the silence with their silvery peals. The castle of Avalon lay dark in the distance, shadowy against the deep azure of the night sky.

When the chimes of the Angelus had died away, she spoke.

"How wonderful is this peace!"

Her tone brought a sudden chill to his heart.

As she moved forward, he dropped his wealth of flowers and held out his hands entreatingly.

"Dearest Hellayne," he said, "tarry but a little longer – "

She seemed to start at his words, and leaned over the back of the stone bench, which was covered with climbing roses. And suddenly under this new light, sad and silent, she seemed no longer his fair companion of the afternoon, all youth, all beauty, all light. Motionless, as if shadowed by some dire foreboding, she stood there and he dared not approach. Once he raised his hand to take her own. But something in her eyes caused the hand to fall as with its own weight.

He could not understand what stayed him, what stayed the one supreme impulse of his heart. He did not understand what checked the words that hovered on his lips. Was it the clear pure light of the eyes he loved so well? Was it some dark power he wot not of?

At last he broke through his restraint.

"Hellayne – " he whispered low. "Hellayne – I love you!"

She did not move.

There was a deep silence.

Then she answered.

"Oh, why have you said the word!"

What did she mean? He cried, trembling, within himself. And now he was no longer in the moonlit rose-bower in the gardens of Avalon, but in a dense forest. The trees meeting overhead made a night so black, that he saw nothing, not even their gnarled trunks.

Hellayne was standing beside him. A pale moonbeam flickered through the interwoven branches.

She pointed to the castle of Avalon, dim in the distance. He made a quick forward step to see her face. Her eyes were very calm.

"Let us go, Tristan!" she said.

"My answer first," he insisted, gazing longingly, wistfully into the eyes that held a night of mystery.

"You have it," she said calmly.

"It was no answer," he pleaded, "from lover to lover – "

"Ah!" she replied, in her voice a great weariness which he had never noted before. "But here are neither loves nor lovers. – Look!"

And he looked.

Before them lay a colorless and lifeless sea, under the arch of a threatening sky. Across that sky dark clouds, with ever-changing shapes, rolled slowly, and presently condensed into a vague shadowy form, while the torpid waves droned a muffled and unearthly dirge.

He covered his eyes, overcome by a mastering fear of that dread shape which he knew, yet knew not.

He knelt before her, took the hands he loved so well into his own and pressed upon them his fevered lips.

"I do not understand – " he moaned.

She regarded him fixedly.

"I am another's wife – "

His head drooped.

"When my eyes first met yours they begged that my love for you might find response in your heart," he said, still holding on to those marvellous white hands. "Did you not accept my worship?"

She neither encouraged nor repulsed him by word or gesture. And he covered her hands with burning kisses. After his passionate outburst had died to silence she spoke quietly, tremulously.

"Tristan," she began, and paused as if she were summoning courage to do that which she must. "Tristan, this may not be."

"I love you," he sobbed. "I love you! This is all I know! All I shall ever know. How can I support life without you? heart of my heart – soul of my soul? – What must I do, to win you for my own – to give you happiness?"

A negative gesture came in response.

"Is sin ever happiness?"

"The priests say not! And yet – our love is not sinful – "

"The priests say truth." Hellayne interposed calmly.